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6.05.2013

The Upright Citizens Brigade

I've mentioned I had family in town last week so let me tell you a little about my aunt Carla. Carla visits us here in NYC every 6 months. I kid you not. She first came up just a couple months after we moved here and since then she comes every spring and fall. Every time she visits, she has a list of places she wants to go, including tourist spots, restaurants, and half the time it's places JP and I have never even heard of. This time, I was able to take the entire week off from work, which gave us a ton of time to tackle her list.

Every time she comes, she plans a secret thing for us to do and doesn't tell us about it until she gets here. Once it was Accomplice, a walking tour/scavenger hunt/theatre show, though I can't tell you too much about it or I might get in trouble (for example, once you buy your tickets, you don't know where you're supposed to go until you get a voicemail telling you - and it ends by saying you must delete it immediately). Another time, it was taking a sailboat around Manhattan. So this time it was a night at the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre!

We saw the show Death by Roo Roo: Your F'ed Up Family. For those who might not be familiar with this theatre, it's an improv and sketch comedy spot. It was started by Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh in 1999 - it not only has shows, but it also has a training center for people who want to train in improv and sketch comedy. The show was saw had two parts - in the first half, they talked to someone in the audience to hear about their totally f'ed up family. Unfortunately, the volunteer we saw SUCKED. He was weird and none of his stories were f'ed up and the guys in the show just made fun of him to his face. Then the improv bit they did based on his family also just sort of made fun of the guy most of the time - they were hilarious! It was great to see that even with a crappy volunteer, they could put on a great show. The second half of the show was them making up an entire scene for 30 minutes based solely on a word given by an audience member. It was equally funny and we had a great time.